Kill, Baby… Kill!

★★★★★

Just in time for Halloween, Netflix has unleashed a ghoulishly generous
helping of Mario Bava films available for streaming. A former
cinematographer, Bava (1914-1980) is the still-unsung master of Italian
horror, the predecessor of directors like Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci,
Umberto Lenzi, and (Mario’s own son) Lamberto Bava. He established a
method of creating fearful moods using light, shadows, and especially
bold colors; these tools often came in handy, as Bava was not usually
assigned the most literate of material. Kill, Baby… Kill! (1966) may
be his masterpiece, though, a story of a vengeful witch, the ghost of a
little girl (above), and a series of murders. No less a director than Martin
Scorsese claims it as an influence on his work.

Lisa and the Devil

★★★★☆

Bava claimed Lisa and the Devil (1974) as his favorite of his
own films. Elke Sommer stars as a tourist in some ancient city. She gets
lost and finds her way to the massive home of a strange family of
aristocrats. She meets a countess (Alida Valli), her handsome son
(Alessio Orano), and a bald, lollipop-licking butler (Telly Savalas, who
had just started his famous Kojak TV series the same year).
Unfortunately, there are some strange and twisted things going on. Bava
turns in some of his dreamiest and most atmospheric work here, but
sadly, this version of his film was never released in theaters (only on video later) and was re-cut and released as The House of Exorcism (see the next item).

The House of Exorcism

★★★☆☆

The House of Exorcism (1975) is what happened to Lisa and the Devil, and
how audiences saw it in 1975. Much of the footage is the same, with
Sommer getting lost, but this time she suffers some kind of attack and
is whisked to a hospital, where it becomes apparent that she has been
possessed by a demon. A priest (Robert Alda) tries to save her, while
she flashes to the events of Lisa and the Devil, as if in a murderous
dream. The exorcism sequences are graphically violent and contain
gratuitous nudity, and were very clearly added to cash in on The
Exorcist fever of the time. Yet it’s fascinating to compare the two
movies.

Bay of Blood

★★★★☆

Everything the Friday the 13th movies tried, they learned from Bava’s
Bay of Blood (1971), sometimes known under its much better title Twitch
of the Death Nerve. It even includes a lot of the original “cabin in the
woods” clichés, though they still feel fresh under Bava’s guiding hand.
Basically, the action takes place in a vacation resort (near a bay),
where teenagers and others have sex and get murdered in a “Ten Little
Indians” fashion by an unknown killer.

Baron Blood

★★★☆☆

Bava’s career was thought to be on the decline when he made Baron Blood
(1972), and it’s not one of his best, but it does benefit
from a lead performance by Joseph Cotten as the baron, as well as an
effective gothic setting in a spooky castle. Elke Sommer also stars.

Bug

Bug (coming 10/23)

★★★★☆

A few newer spooky films also arrive on Netflix just in time for the
haunted holiday. One of them is William Friedkin’s great, underrated Bug
(2006). It was heavily advertised as “from the director of The
Exorcist,” and fans were understandably disappointed when they found it
was something different: A study of paranoia, with no demon possession
or green vomit. An ex-soldier (Michael Shannon) begins to feel that bugs
are crawling around under his skin. His new waitress girlfriend (Ashley
Judd) believes him, and starts to feel the creepy-crawlies too. Friedkin
plays up the difference between what we believe and what is
real, using constricting sets and weak lighting. Tracy Letts wrote the
screenplay, based on his own stage play.

Paranormal Activity 3

Paranormal Activity 3 (coming 10/20)

★★★☆☆

It’s impressive how the creators of this “video surveillance” horror
series manage to keep it going by digging deeper into the characters’
pasts: Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) is set in the 1980s, when the female
heroes of the first two entries were young girls. Directors Henry Joost
and Ariel Schulman—who also made the controversial Facebook
documentary Catfish—manage to create one absolutely brilliant
sequence by strapping a video camera to an oscillating fan; it’s better
seen than described.

Session 9

★★★☆☆

Many other unsung chillers are already available for streaming,
including Brad Anderson’s Session 9 (2001). In a movie with no monsters
or chainsaw-wielding maniacs, an asbestos cleanup crew takes on a
massive, abandoned hospital (filmed in an actual abandoned hospital in
Danvers, Massachusetts). Inside, one of the men becomes obsessed with
recordings of creepy therapy sessions, while past histories and
conflicts arise in terrifying ways.

The House of the Devil

★★★★☆

Ti West’s The House of the Devil (2009) may just be the finest American
horror film of the past 10 years, though hardly anything happens. A
college girl (Jocelin Donahue), looking for extra cash to enable her to
rent her own place, takes on a mysterious babysitting job. A huge chunk
of the movie is spent simply watching her explore the house, but with
the distinct possibility that anything could go wrong at any time. Genre
icons like Dee Wallace, Mary Woronov and, Tom Noonan co-star, as does the
wonderful Greta Gerwig.

Son of Frankenstein

Son of Frankenstein

★★★★☆

And what Halloween would be complete without a screening of something
from the Universal horror canon? Son of Frankenstein (1939) is the third
in the Frankenstein series, and it’s a step down from the masterful
Bride of Frankenstein, but it still has a great deal going for it. Boris
Karloff returned for his final turn as the monster, and Bela Lugosi
gives a terrific performance as Ygor, the servant with a partly broken
neck. Director Rowland V. Lee makes terrific use of the bizarre sets,
and a wonderful score by Frank Skinner completes the mood. Mel Brooks
borrowed heavily from this movie for his 1974 parody Young Frankenstein.

What’s new

The Forgiveness of Blood

The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Chico & Rita

Bruno

Hotel Rwanda

The Woman in the Fifth

The Artist (10/24)

Expiring soon

Bread and Tulips (10/19)

Fados (10/20)

Down in the Delta (10/24)

Hot Tub Time Machine (10/26)

The Scent of Green Papaya (10/26)

[Streaming movies and TV shows—on services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Instant Videos—are ephemeral: Here one day, gone the next. The purpose of the Now Streaming series is to alert you to what movies and shows are new to streaming, what you might want to watch before it disappears, and other treasures that are worth checking out.]

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Jeffrey has been a working film critic for more than 14 years. He first fell in love with the movies at age six while watching "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein" and served as staff critic for the San Francisco Examiner from 2000 through 2003.